Students work as brand ambassadors for job experience
Three USD students are working as brand ambassadors, social media influencers and executives for various companies. Their duties include recruiting other ambassadors and posting on social media for compensation.
Carson Coulter, a first-year sport marketing major, works as a brand influencer for RevitalU. He got involved in this position after his mom discovered the company online.
“My mom actually discovered the company about four or five months ago, and then she bought into it and she bought some products and realized how good of a product it really is,” Coulter said. “She introduced me to it, and then she also introduced me to the business aspect of it and that’s how I got started.”
Coulter said RevitalU is a newer company that launched about six months ago, and they sell “smart coffee,” which is just Arabica coffee beans mixed with various fruit and root extracts and caffeine, among other ingredients, according to the RevitalU webpage.
Coulter’s responsibilities as a brand influencer include utilizing social media to promote the product, giving out samples of the product and recruiting other people as team members for the brand.
“I don’t get paid to promote the brand, it’s more of a compensation thing when people start purchasing the product and I get people like team members to start selling the product and stuff like that,” he said.
Coulter said his experience with RevitalU will help him get the experience of networking for a business.
“Obviously this whole thing is through networking so that’s obviously a big plus, just getting the experience of what it’s like in the marketing world and sales and all that stuff,” he said. “That will definitely benefit me in the long run.”
Jessica Delgado, a first-year psychology major, is an executive for It Works, which is a health, wellness and cosmetic company. She heard about the company through social media.
“We help people with their health goals pretty much and we have so many amazing people that are global which is also like so awesome,” Delgado said. “It’s crazy to me because I’ve only started a month ago, almost two months ago, and it’s been such an amazing journey helping people and just seeing them have results and it’s such a rewarding feeling.”
Delgado said she does product posts on her Instagram page and hosts parties for the body wraps she sells. Working for It Works will help her with her future career in psychology, she said.
“I’ve never really seen myself as a business person but I know this will help me with the social aspect of like meeting the people and interacting with them,” she said. “I want to work with people.”
Sawyer Stevens, a junior medical biology and physics double major, is a brand ambassador for Amazon Prime Student.
Stevens tables in the MUC twice a month to promote the brand for students, in addition to his other responsibilities of posting on social media and participating in group calls with other brand ambassadors on other university campuses.
“It’s just like Amazon Prime but it’s marketed to students, so it’s like half the price and you sign in with a student ID (similar to how) you pay half the price for Spotify Premium (as a student),” he said.
Stevens said it’s important to get the product’s name out to students.
“It’s more of whatever you put into it, you’ll get out of it, so it’s kind of on you to get the product’s name out there and try to get people to sample it and see if they like the product,” he said. “That’s pretty much my responsibilities just to get the name out there and hand out some samples so people can try it, try the product.”
Stevens said his experience as a brand ambassador will help him with his future career in the medical biology field.
“I’m using it as a networking opportunity working with different outside businesses,” he said. “It’s a great way to talk to people and work on your personal skills and marketability, which are good things to have when you’re interviewing for jobs and things like that.”
